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The ensemble was founded in 1983. Since than, Trio Contraste is performing all over Romania and abroad, over 40 concerts per year: Germany, Holland, Luxemburg, Switzerland, France, Denmark, Austria, China, Sweden, Poland. All the three members of Contraste are having also a solo career, performing classical music as well, but, when they are playing together, their main purpose is to promote Romanian contemporary music. Most of the trio repertoire was dedicated by many important Romanian composers like: Anatol Vieru, Aurel Stroe, Myriam Marbé, Stefan Niculescu, Nicolae Brandus, Octavian Nemescu, Corneliu Dan Georgescu, Eugen Wendel, Lucian Meţianu, Doina Rotaru, Violeta Dinescu, Maia Ciobanu, Sorin lerescu, Dan Dediu, George Balint, Petru Stoianov, Irinel Anghel, Diana Rotaru etc

The Trio is permanent invited to the Bucharest International Contemporary Music Festival, which take place every year, in May. Also it is taken part of many international festivals like East – Vest Amsterdam (1991); Contemporary Music Festival – Huddersfield (1993); Nueva Musica – Bogota (1993); Musicarama – Hong- Kong (1995); Piano Plus Festival – Bamberg and Zeit fur Neue Musik – Bayreuth (2001); George Enescu Festival – Bucharest (2003, 2007), Culture Escape – Switzerland (2007), Stockholm New Music – Sweden (2008), Cracovia New Music Festival – Poland (2008).

Trio Contraste was awarded with Romanian Composers Union Prize (1986) and few years later, in 1990 it had a Stipendienpreis in Darmstadt- Germany. One of its members – Ion Bogdan Ştefănescu – took also The Romanian Composers Union Prize, in 2007, for his solo activity. It was for the first time in the Composers Union history, when the prize goes to an interpret. Also, in the same year 2007, Trio Contraste became Solo Trio of Banatul Philharmonic, Timişoara. In 2009 Romanian Composers Union awarded Trio Contraste for its performance in promovate the Romanian contemporarry music.

The Trio is often invited in many brodcasted cultural events, it has also recorded for Romanian Radio Society, Deutschlandfunk-Köln, WDR, Société de Musique Contemporaine Lausanne, Bayeriche Rundfunk, Swiss 2